This morning I went to wake Elizabeth up and she wasn’t in her bed. She was fine: she’d just gotten up quietly and gone to the living room—which is atypical for her, obvs, or I would have cottoned to what was going on a little sooner. But those seconds of first thinking “That’s funny: she’s so buried under her covers I don’t even see her,” and then “Actually…she’s so burrowed in, it doesn’t even look like there’s room for her under there, nervous ha ha,” and then “Okay, okay, she’s NOT under there, she might have just gone in to our bed after I got up,” and then “SHE PROBABLY JUST GOT UP QUIETLY, THAT’S ALL, THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC ABOUT THIS”—well, it was a little draining, and I found my hands were a little shaky by the time I saw the back of her head in the living room.
NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO THEM, is the problem with having children.
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Rob, eating a taco: “Mmmmmmm, BEEF!” Paul: “…It’s turkey.” Another meat education fail. (It would be a more understandable fail if we didn’t, every taco night, send either Rob or William to the downstairs freezer with instructions to bring up a package of ground turkey.)
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Rachel AKA Doing My Best AKA Crappy Day Present Sender has started a blog, and one of her entries is the Crappy Day Present backstory, plus instructions!
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Elsewhere:
On the baby name blog, one of the hardest naming issues I’ve ever attempted to answer: what to do when you’re marrying someone who has a hyphenated surname.
On Milk and Cookies: our favorite cheap but good brand-name stuff. Like, not generic, but not La Mer either. I’m taking notes from the comments section.
On the review blog: review of a custom-decorated (with stickers) toothbrush and toothpaste for kids, with a $100 Visa gift card giveaway. Through June 9th.
I’m still having trouble getting past the part where you were intending to wake her up and on a Saturday before 7 a.m (if we’re in the same time zone and your posting time is accurately displayed). Very occasionally we have to wake the 10 year old on a school day, but never the 5 year old. I don’t even have a working alarm clock, she wakes me up so reliably.
Sorry for the scare, though.
Ah! That is EXACTLY the problem with children, no doubt.
“NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO THEM, is the problem with having children.”
This statement fills me with both warm fuzzy feelings about the strength of emotion that accompanies child bearing… and abject terror.
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The taco meat story made me giggle.
I just “lost” our two year old for a minute at the strawberry patch (turns out, she can walk pretty far in a minute and when she kneels down real low, she’s lower than the high strawberry plants). I had a one minute FA-REAK out about it.
Yeah. Nothing can happen to them. (PLEASE.)
Do you mean “caught on” instead of “cottoned”?
Last summer, Ethan went missing for about 5 minutes. In the end, he was hiding under a pile of stuffed toys in his room. That didn’t stop me from hysterically crying and having an all-out panic attack AFTER he was found.
My children think all meat is chicken. Except bacon. They know bacon. Only I’m not sure they know it’s either pork or pig.
Also, my husband, who is standing over my shoulder, says to add that he thought the end of Y: The Last Man was a little, “Eh.”
Anonymous- No. To “cotton to” something is to grasp it or to understand it or to figure it out.
Interesting, I have never heard that before. I love your blog!
One night at dinner my 4 yr old said, “Mommy, chicken is the best vegetable.” :P
Here’s a meat story for you. On Friday I was driving Joseph home from school and we drove past a garage sale with a sign that said “Great stuff! Board games! Holiday decor! FRESH GROUND BEEF!” and Joseph read it and said “Mmmmmm, garage sale beef. That sounds delicious.” and because of his Aspergers I can’t always read the inflections in his voice so I have no idea if he was serious or not.
Re: Ground Beef: Last night we had steak for dinner. And we went through this whole conversation with my daughter who is 5 about where beef comes from and where pork comes from and so on. And not three seconds later, her younger sister says “I don’t want any chicken.” It was such a listening fail we had to laugh.
Also, re: losing Elizabeth: Last week sometime I left the bathroom after taking my shower and started making the bed, as is my habit. Only to have my 5 year old spring up from under the covers and scare the bejeesus out of me. I have also frequently gone in at night to check on the girls only to see their pillows empty and have a mini heart attack. And then find them sleeping, pillow-less, at the other end of the bed.
Ah – Harper has done that to me once or twice – and part of my brain knows she hasn’t be abducted or left the house and yet… I think she went to nap on the floor of her closet once, and once, when she was much younger, under the changing table. Thanks kid!